Farmstay

DIY Countertops When our Airbnb guest house flooded, the insurance unsurprisingly gave us peanuts to redo it. Hiring someone else would have left us with crappy flooring, crappy fixtures and a crappy laminate countertop. We of course decided to just redo the house ourselves and put in quality work. To do it yourself or not do it yourself One of the big expenses was the countertop, which we priced at thousands of dollars. I don’t believe I found anything for less than two grand. So of course I called up my big sister, Tashelle, and said I have an idea…

I woke up early before the sun was up to get some beautiful pictures of the sky and enjoy the quiet of the desert before the farm animals wake up. I wish I’d had more time as the sunrise was extra beautiful and the weather extra perfect which is rare in the extreme desert. But alas, I had to teach my psychology class at Victor Valley College. After a super interesting class on false memories and cult methods for brainwashing members, I headed back to the ranch to keep working on our renovations. The bathroom is looking good with a…

I haven’t posted much about this even though we’ve been struggling with it since january. I was walking past the farmstay guest house and noticed water leaking out the walls. I ran inside and there was just inches of water covering the entire first floor. Disaster! I was so upset. The hot water heater’s heating element had shorted out and water was just pumping out. We’ve had to tear out and replace the carpet and the dry wall. The kitchen cabinets had to go and we are replacing them-well at least the bottom ones. The top ones of course…

Yea! We have moved forward a teensy bit in the permitting process! We finally got ahold of Heidi-our new county liaison. She put in writing, IN WRITING PEOPLE, what she was going to do for us and how much we’d need to pay and how long things would take. AMAZING. It’s taken more than a year, but we’ve now been promised that the Site Plan Permit is what we need and that we won’t have to dish out anymore cash. Halleluia. So a year after starting the permit process and turning in our original site plan permit, we are now…

Good grief I’m tired. We started at 10 and I only sat down once before we stopped at 5. All day long I gave my little speech about what farmstays are and how fun they are and how important they are because they help to keep farms in business and food on the table. I had that spiel down pat before the end of the day! I think I’m going to be saying it in my sleep lol!! But it really went well. I am very happy with people’s reactions and I’ve already had emails about booking for this summer…

So as a consummate marketer, I decided to join Scottie of Farm Stay US as she traveled to the LA Times Travel Show. This show is where different travel groups or destinations can flaunt their stuff. Scottie is the great white knight of agritourism, fighting to support little tiny farms like ourselves. Farm Stay US showcases all the farms around the country so that visitors can find them to stay the night and put a little bit of money in the farmer’s lint-filled pockets (or more like hay-filled). Our first day at the show has gone fabulously (excluding the tuberculosis outbreak in…

A recent visitor to the farm asked me an excellent question today on the phone. “What do you need most?” I was stumped. So many things flooded into my brain that I couldn’t think of any one thing to say. We need some wheelbarrows, shovels, rakes and other tools. We need feed. We need apple trees because we want to start an orchard. We definitely need to find someone to refinance our hay farm. We need fencing and irrigation supplies. We need seeds. We need paint. We need, need, need, need, need. On a farm, you need so many many…

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Flip Flop Ranch is focused on saving endangered breeds of livestock and rescuing as many feral cats as possible ;)
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